Farewell, farewell! but this I tel!
To thee, thou wedding-guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone and now the wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned
And is of sense forlorn :
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
And to teach, by his
own exam
ple, love and reverence to all things that God made
and loveth.
Nor oft has peopled Earth sent up
So deep and wide a groan before,
As when the word astounded France,
"The life of Mirabeau is o'er!"
From its one heart a nation wailed;
For well the startled sense divined
A greater power had fled away
Than aught that now remained behind.
The scathed and haggard face of will,
And look so strong with weaponed thought,
Had been to many million hearts
The All between themselves and naught;
And so they stood aghast and pale,
As if to see the azure sky
Come shattering down, and show beyond
The black and bare Infinity.
For he, while all men trembling peered
Upon the Future's empty space,
Had strength to bid above the void
The oracle unveil its face;
And when his voice could rule no more,
A thicker weight of darkness fell,
And tombed in its sepulchral vault
The wearied master of the spell.
A myriad hands like shadows weak,
Or stiff and sharp as bestial claws,
Had sought to steer the fluctuant mass
That bore his country's life and laws;
The rudder felt his giant hand,
And quailed beneath the living grasp
That now must drop the helm of Fate,
Nor pleasure's cup can madly clasp.
France did not reck how fierce a storm
Of rending passion, blind and grim,
Had ceased its audible uproar
When death sank heavily on him;
Nor heeded they the countless days
Of toiling smoke and blasting flame,
That now by this one final hour
Were summed for him as guilt and shame
The wondrous life that flowed so long,
A stream of all commixtures vile,
Had seemed for them in morning light
With gold and crystal waves to smile.
It rolled with mighty breadth and sound
A new creation through the land,
Then sudden vanished into earth,
And left a barren waste of sand.
To them at first the world appeared
Aground, and lying shipwrecked there,
And freedom's folded flag no more
With dazzling sun-burst filled the air;
But 't is in after years for men
A sadder and a greater thing,
To muse upon the inward heart
Of him who lived the People's King.
O wasted strength! O light and calm
And better hopes so vainly given!
Like rain upon the herbless sea
Poured down by too benignant Heaven.
We see not stars unfixed by winds,
Or lost in aimless thunder-peals;
But man's large soul, the star supreme,
In guideless whirl how oft it reels!
The mountain hears the torrent dash,
But rocks will not in billows run;
No eagle's talons rend away
Those eyes that joyous drink the sun:
Yet man, by choice and purpose weak,
Upon his own devoted head
Calls down the flash, as if its fires
A crown of peaceful glory shed.
Yet wherefore mourn? The law
Is holier than a sage's prayer;
The godlike power bestowed on men
Demands of them a godlike care;
And noblest gifts, if basely used,
Will sternliest avenge the wrong,
And grind with slavish pangs the slave
Whom once they made divinely strong.
The lamp, that, 'mid the sacred cell,
On heavenly forms its glory sheds,
Untended dies, and in the gloom
A poisonous vapor glimmering spreads
It shines and flares, and reeling ghosts
Enormous through the twilight swell,
Till o'er the withered world and heart
Rings loud and slow the dooming knell.
No more I hear a nation's shout
Around the hero's tread prevailing,
No more I hear above his tomb
A nation's fierce, bewildered wailing;
I stand amid the silent night,
And think of man and all his woe
With fear and pity, grief and awe,
When I remember Mirabeau.
THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND.
THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND. — James Montgomery
"Ye have done it unto me."- MATT. xxv. 40.
A POOR wayfaring man of grief
Hath often crossed me on my way,
Who sued so humbly for relief,
That I could never answer, "Nay:"
I had not power to ask his name,
Whither he went, or whence he came;
Yet was there something in his eye
That won my love, I knew not why.
Once, when my scanty meal was spread,
He entered; - not a word he spake ;-
Just perishing, for want of bread:
I gave him all; he blessed it, brake,
And ate, but gave me part again;
Mine was an angel's portion then,
For while I fed with eager haste,
That crust was manna to my taste.
I spied him where a fountain burst
Clear from the rock; his strength was gone; The heedless water mocked his thirst;
He heard it, saw it hurrying on:
I ran to raise the sufferer up;
Thrice from the stream he drained my cup,
Dipt, and returned it running o'er;
I drank, and never thirsted more.
'Twas night; the floods were out; it blew
A winter hurricane aloof;
I heard his voice abroad, and flew
To bid him welcome to my roof;
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